| 20 fr. | its price in Brussels |
| 15 fr. | protectionist duty |
| 5 fr. | transport by rail |
| 40 fr. | total with prices equalized. |
Then my question is, from this point of view, what is the use of the railway?
Frankly, is it not somewhat humiliating for the nineteenth century to prepare a spectacle of childishness such as this for future ages with such imperturbable seriousness? To be fooled by others is already not very pleasant, but to use the huge system of representation in order to fool yourself is to fool yourself twice over and in a matter of arithmetic, this is something to take down the pride of the century of enlightenment a peg or two.
PUBLISHING HISTORY:
Original title: “Réciprocité.”
Place and date of first publication: JDE 12 (October 1845): 211.
[print edition page 58]
First French edition as book or pamphlet: Economic Sophisms (First Series) (1846).
Location in Paillottet’s edition of OC: Vol. 4. Sophismes économiques. Petits pamphlets I, pp. 67–70.
Previous translations: 1st English ed., 1846; 1st American ed., 1848; FEE ed., 1964.
We have just seen that everything that makes transport expensive during a journey acts to encourage protection or, if you prefer, that protection acts to encourage everything that makes transport expensive.
It is therefore true to say that a tariff is a marsh, a rut or gap in the road, or a steep slope; in a word, an obstacle whose effect results in increasing the difference between the prices of consumption and production. Similarly, it is incontrovertible that marshes or bogs are genuine protective tariffs.
There are people (a few, it is true, but there are some) who are beginning to understand that obstacles are no less obstacles because they are artificial and that our well-being has more to gain from freedom than from protection, precisely for the same reason that makes a canal more favorable than a “sandy, steep and difficult track.”1
But, they say, this freedom has to be mutual. If we reduced our barriers with Spain without Spain reducing hers with us, we would obviously be stupid. Let us therefore sign commercial treaties on the basis of an equitable reciprocity, let us make concessions in return for concessions, and let us make the sacrifice of buying in order to obtain the benefit of selling.
It pains me to tell people who reason thus that, whether they realize it or not, they are thinking along protectionist lines, the only difference being that they are slightly more inconsistent than pure protectionists, just as pure protectionists are more inconsistent than absolute prohibitionists.2
I will demonstrate this through the following fable:
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STULTA AND PUERA3
Once upon a time there were, somewhere or other, two towns, Stulta and Puera. At great expense, they built a road between the two. When it was completed, Stulta said to itself, “Now Puera is flooding us with its products; we had better look into it.” As a result, it created and paid a Corps of Obstructors,4 so called because their mission was to place obstacles in the path of convoys that arrived from Puera. Soon afterward, Puera also had a Corps of Obstructors.
After several centuries had passed, and enlightenment had made considerable progress, such was the growth of Puera’s awareness that it had grasped that these reciprocal obstacles must necessarily be mutually detrimental. It sent a diplomat to Stulta, who, though his words were couched in official terms, effectively said: “We built a road and now we are obstructing it. This is absurd. It would have been better for us to have left things in their original state. First of all, we would not have had to pay for the road, and secondly for the obstacles. In the name of Puera, I have come to suggest to you, not that we suddenly abandon the setting up of mutual obstacles between us, which would be to act in accordance with a principle and we despise principles as much as you do, but to reduce these obstacles a little, taking care to balance our respective sacrifices in this respect equitably.” This was what the diplomat said. Stulta asked for time to consider this. It consulted in turn its manufacturers and its farmers. Finally, after a few years, it declared that the negotiations had broken down.
At this news, the inhabitants of Puera held a council. An old man (who had always been suspected of being secretly bribed by Stulta) stood up and said: “The obstacles created by Stulta damage our sales, and this is terrible. The ones we have created ourselves damage our purchases, and this is
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also terrible. We cannot do anything about the first situation, but the second is in our power. Let us at least free ourselves of one since we cannot get rid of both. Let us abolish our Corps of Obstructors without demanding that Stulta do the same. One day, it will doubtless learn to do its sums better.”
A second councilor, a practical man of action who had no theoretical principles and was imbued with the experience of his ancestors, replied: “Do not listen to this dreamer, this theoretician, this innovator, this utopian,5 this economist, this Stulta-lover.6 We would all be ruined if the obstacles on the road were not equal, in equitable balance between Stulta and Puera. There would be greater difficulty in going than in coming and in exporting than in importing. Compared with Stulta, we would be in the inferior position that Le Havre, Nantes, Bordeaux, Lisbon, London, Hamburg, and New Orleans are in compared with the towns situated at the sources of the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne, the Tagus, the Thames, the Elbe, and the Mississippi, for it is harder to go up rivers than to go down them.” (A voice observed that towns at the mouths of rivers were more prosperous than those at their sources.) “That is not possible.” (The same voice: But it is true.) “Well then, they have prospered contrary to the rules.” Such conclusive reasoning shook the assembly. The speaker succeeded in convincing it by referring to national independence, national honor, national dignity, national production, the flood of products, tributes, and merciless competition; in short, he carried the day for maintaining the obstacles and, if you are interested in this, I can take you to certain countries in which you will see with your own eyes the Corps of Road Builders7 and the Corps of Obstructors working with the best information available to them, in accordance with a decree issued by the same legislative assembly and at the expense of the same taxpayers, the former to clear the road and the latter to obstruct it.
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PUBLISHING HISTORY:
Original title: “Prix absolus.”
Place and date of first publication: JDE 12 (October 1845): 213–15. This chapter was originally numbered 12 in the JDE but became chapter 11 in the book version of Economic Sophisms and incorporated chapter 11, “Stulta et Puera,” from JDE 12: 211–12.
First French edition as book or pamphlet: Economic Sophisms (First Series) (1846).
Location in Paillottet’s edition of OC: Vol. 4. Sophismes économiques. Petits pamphlets I, pp. 70–74.
Previous translations: 1st English ed., 1846; 1st American ed., 1848; FEE ed., 1964.
Do you wish to assess the merits of freedom